Sa' (Islamic measure)

In the language the sa' is whatever measure grain is weighed with — a singular noun with plurals such as aswu' and si'an. In the jurists' technical usage it is a dry measure used in buying and selling, by which many legal rulings are quantified; it is also glossed as a drinking vessel ¹.

Two sa's circulated among the jurists: the sa' of Medina, called the Hijazi sa', and the sa' of Iraq, called the Hajjaji sa', the Hajjaji qafiz or the Baghdadi sa' — the Medinese one being the smaller. The majority of jurists hold that the legal sa' used in the rulings is the smaller Medinese one, while Abu Hanifa took the Iraqi sa' as the legal standard, the reports from Abu Yusuf and Muhammad being inconsistent ^{1 2}. The jurists agree that a sa' is four mudds, then differ over the mudd: the Iraqis make it two Iraqi ratls and the Medinese a ratl and a third, so the Medinese sa' holds five and a third ratls and the Iraqi one eight ratls ¹.

Many rulings are fixed by the sa': zakat al-fitr, the expiation for deliberately breaking a Ramadan fast, the zihar expiation, the ihram fidyah, expiation for breaking the fast with a valid excuse, expiation for delaying makeup fasts, the wife's maintenance and the quantity of water used for wudu and ghusl ².

• Text from the Kuwaiti Fiqh Encyclopedia, headword «مقادير» (paragraphs 6-9 on the sa'), in the extracted Noor-Book copy; the modern litre and gram equivalents given in the same footnote await verification on the page image.